Please be patient with me, I have an extremely hard time with self expression 
I am not good at like, observing a thing and putting my interpretation onto paper. I try a lot, but it never meets my (probably impossible) standards. This really started to frustrate me recently, so instead I started just drawing interesting shapes and filling them with patterns. The image attached to this post is an example of one.
But now I have these little sketches that look cool to me but feel unfinished. I don't know how to develop them any further. If I try, I feel like I ruin them.
And then it dawned on me: I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing. I've been trying out art as a fun hobby for the past 2 years. I read a couple of textbooks and took notes, I've filled a few sketchbooks, painted a little, and had a great time. But I can tell I'm still shit and I want to be good. How do I do that? I guess I have a few main questions:
-What should I spend my extremely limited practice time on?
-How can I incorporate the things I like about others' art into my own? Do I just straight up try to copy them?
-Some people I've asked irl have said it's just a matter of time. I haven't been creating long enough to be good yet. Is there any truth to this? Am I just impatient?
Here's some more of those weird sketches if you're interested. I can also post some more uh... grounded? art for comparison?
spoiler
Thank you!!
Yeah that's been a consistent recommendation from everything I've read. I just feel bad when I go to draw someone or something and I make a bad image because I'm not good enough yet, and it's like this weird loop that prevents me from doing it. I probably just have to power through it until I start seeing improvement
100%. in the guide I posted I talk a bit about gesture drawing, which is doing brief sketches of figures for skill acquisition. A lot of what you draw will not look correct or be pleasing to you, especially early on. This is normal and expected. It's important to give yourself room to draw things that are imperfect. That's the only way to get better. And you will!